PHOENIX — The second Powerball winner in last week’s $587.5 million drawing is a married man in his 30s from Fountain Hills, Ariz., lottery officials said Friday, Dec. 7.

The man bought one of two tickets in the drawing, but he isn’t stepping into the spotlight just yet. State officials haven’t released his name.

“He and his wife couldn’t believe it,” lottery official Karen Bach said. “They checked the numbers over and over again — absolutely shocked.”

The winner opted to take the cash option of $192 million. He declined to take part in the news conference in Phoenix.

Axelrod’s mustache vanishes for charity

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s strategist David Axelrod had his trademark mustache shaved Friday on MSNBC after the hosts of “Morning Joe” helped raise $1 million for his epilepsy charity.

Axelrod had said on “Morning Joe” he would shave on live TV the mustache he’d worn for 40 years if Obama lost Pennsylvania, Minnesota or Michigan in the Nov. 6 election. Host Joe Scarborough had agreed to grow a mustache if Obama won either Florida or North Carolina.

Obama won Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan and Florida, but Axelrod said he would still shave his mustache if his charity raised $1 million by Nov. 30. His daughter, Lauren, has epilepsy, and his wife, Susan, helped create the charity.

Deal on climate is proving elusive

DOHA, Qatar — Delegates worked through the night to salvage a deal at United Nations climate talks as efforts to bridge gaps over financing for poor countries and demand for bolder actions by rich countries on emissions made little headway.

The two-week U.N. conference was never meant to yield a global climate pact to curb emissions of greenhouse gases — that has been put off until 2015. But even the modest goals of extending the Kyoto Protocol and laying the groundwork for the 2015 deal only served to reopen old disputes between rich and poor countries that have dogged the talks for decades.

And with the negotiations on the brink of failure, activists said they were giving up hope that any deal would include tough measures to protect the planet from the effects of global warming.

More than 500 dead in typhoon

NEW BATAAN, Philippines — Rescuers were digging through mud and debris Friday to retrieve more bodies strewn across a farming valley in the southern Philippines by a powerful typhoon. The death toll from the storm has surpassed 500, with more than 400 people missing.

More than 310,000 people have lost their homes since Typhoon Bopha struck Tuesday and are crowded inside evacuation centers or staying with their relatives, relying on food and emergency supplies being rushed in by government agencies and aid groups.

“I want to know how this tragedy happened and how to prevent a repeat,” President Benigno Aquino III said during a visit to New Bataan town, the ground zero of the disaster, where ferocious winds and rains lashed the area.

Authorities see chance to find killer

EVANSDALE, Iowa — A sheriff investigating the apparent kidnapping and slaying of two Iowa cousins said Friday that the discovery of the young girls’ bodies is a long-awaited break in the case that could help find their killer.

Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony Thompson said investigators would be deliberate in pursuing the case of Lyric Cook and Elizabeth Collins, who were 10 and 8 when they disappeared in Evansdale in July. Hunters stumbled upon two bodies believed to be Cook and Collins on Wednesday in a wooded wildlife area about 25 miles away.

After nearly five months of chasing tips and theories about the girls’ whereabouts, Thompson said police “finally have something credible. We finally have something we can sink our teeth into” in the high-profile case.

Those and other directives governing conduct by Chinese officials have been issued by the newly inaugurated Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party in what state media described as a “bid to win the trust and support of the people.”

They’re part of new leader Xi Jinping’s much-ballyhooed campaign to root out corruption among officials by targeting the trappings of power. The call for official behavioral adjustments leaning toward simpler and shorter comes as Xi pushes for increased respect for China’s Constitution and the rule of law.

Colbert bumped out by Gov. Haley

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina’s governor appears to have closed the door on appointing Stephen Colbert to the U.S. Senate, all because he didn’t know the state drink was milk.

During Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” on Thursday, Colbert urged fans to send Gov. Nikki Haley messages on Twitter telling her why he would make a great senator from his home state. Haley is appointing a senator after Jim DeMint announced he is resigning.

Haley responded Friday on her Facebook page with a link to her April appearance on Colbert’s show, where the host, who was raised in Charleston, did not know the state beverage is milk.

Haley wrote that was a “big mistake.”

Obama won’t limit inauguration funds

WASHINGTON — In a reversal from four years ago, President Barack Obama will accept unlimited sums of money from corporations and individuals to pay for events surrounding his inauguration, a spokeswoman said Friday.

Lobbyists, political action committees and foreign entities, however, still will be banned from underwriting the costs of the gala events, spokeswoman Addie Whisenant said. The committee also will reject donations from companies that haven’t paid back loans from the 2008 federal bailout of Wall Street, as well as corporate sponsorship deals.

“Our goal is to make sure that we will meet the fundraising requirements for this civic event after the most expensive presidential campaign in history,” she said in a statement. “To ensure continued transparency, all names of donors will be posted to a regularly updated website.”

Clinton tells Irish work not complete

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Extremists still scheming to spoil Northern Ireland’s fragile peace can be beaten through a commitment to political sacrifice, compromise and vigilance, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday as she visited a Belfast torn by rising sectarian passions and death threats.

Clinton stood shoulder to shoulder with the leaders of Northern Ireland’s 5-year-old unity government to denounce this week’s violence and intimidation fueled by arguments over flying the British flag.

“Peace does take sacrifice and compromise and vigilance, day after day. We’ve seen that again this week, that the work is not complete, because we have seen violence break out again,” said Clinton, flanked by First Minister Peter Robinson, a British Protestant, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, an Irish Catholic and former Irish Republican Army commander.

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